


It’s Good To Have You Back

by sipjackerryjuice



Category: Tales from the Gas Station
Genre: Fluff, Fluffy, M/M, Oneshot, Spoilers (duh), it happens during Volume Three, jerk, tw mentions of blood and injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25762816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sipjackerryjuice/pseuds/sipjackerryjuice
Summary: Jerry finds Jack in the war-zone of a gas station and cleans him up.
Relationships: Jack/Jerry (Tales From the Gas Station)
Kudos: 23





	It’s Good To Have You Back

**Author's Note:**

> hi! I know this one is short but it’s nice and fluffy  
> I wrote it bc I wanted Jack to get some nice care and attention when he was so upset  
> thanks for reading and drop some kudos or leave a comment if you liked it! :)  
> \- sara 
> 
> p.s. if Jack sees this I will not fling myself off the Eiffel Tower bc it’s v sweet and if he doesn’t like it well that’s his problem

I swerved to the side, just narrowly missing the naked weirdo standing in the road. As I looked into the mirror, I could’ve sworn it was Farmer Junior. Damn, wasn’t that guy supposed to be dead?  
Eh, zombies weren’t my biggest concern at the moment. I’d tried calling Jack at least a dozen times within the last hour— on the store phone and his cellphone —but had gotten no answer. We’d had no contact since he’d called me and convinced me I needed to disappear for a while. I’d seen some weird shit during those six days, and if there was anyone I could talk about it to, it was Jack.  
When I pulled up to the gas station, it was deserted and dark inside. The smell of blood and rot and fire and ash was so thick in the air you could practically see it. Spray painted across the front of the gas station was “ **GO AWAY** ” in big red letters.  
Had Jack gone all serial killer hermit without me? That would suck major ass.  
I got out of the car and walked over to the front doors. It took a little elbow grease to get them open, and what I saw inside was truly shocking, and that’s coming from someone who’s seen plenty of truly shocking shit. Especially recently.  
Either the power had been cut, or Jack had turned into a vampire. The only light in the store came from the front doors I’d only just opened and through the cracks in the boarded-up windows. The smell was ten times worse inside. Shelves had been knocked over, and what little junk food that hadn’t been eaten or carried off by the raccoons was strewn across the floor. There were bullet holes in the counter, and the drink case had been shattered for the nth time. There were mousetraps scattered everywhere. The tar pit had been obliterated and splattered all over the walls and ceiling and floor and holy Jesus Fried Chicken Batman there was blood _EVERYWHERE_.  
It looked like someone had given the interior a grisly new paint job. There was dark red and a black I couldn’t identify. Don’t polar bears have black blood? Was Jack killing polar bears without me?!  
I looked around for Jack but couldn’t find him. He wasn’t behind the counter, he wasn’t in the bathroom, he wasn’t in the cooler or the storage closet. He wasn’t next to the pile of garbage lying in the middle of the floor with coffee beans scattered around and— wait that pile of garbage IS Jack!  
He let out a low moan and started twitching uncontrollably the way tweakers do.  
“Yo! Jack!”  
He mumbled something under his breath, something about monsters and closets. Still, he didn’t acknowledge me or even get up.  
I walked over and tapped him lightly with my foot. As I did, the gross concoction on the floor squelched against my sneakers.  
“Anybody home, Jackarino?”  
Again, no response but a few incoherent mumbles. I’d seen Jack at low points before, but the way he looked now surely had to break some world record for Rockiest Rock Bottom. I kneeled down at his level and poked him a bit, gently. When that didn’t work, I got hold of him by his shoulders and sat him up.  
His eyes were open wide, but the look he had was far away. I shook him a bit.  
“Jack? You there buddy?”  
He looked absolutely awful. His face was streaked in dirt and blood and that same black liquid. His hair and eyebrows and skin were singed in places, and his clothes were torn. If they were any other color other than a greenish-brown, it was gone now. The smell was worse than someone boiling puke and ammonia in a pot that washed up on a beach.  
“C’mon Jack, we gotta clean you up.”  
As I lifted him to his feet, he muttered something about guns. Funny, I’d heard him say several times he wasn’t a gun guy.  
When his remaining leg and prosthetic leg wouldn’t cooperate, I slung him over my shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Once we were in the bathroom, I sat him down on the floor and turned on the faucet on full blast. It was hot, but not enough to burn him. Steam rose from the water and fogged up the mirror in a matter of minutes. I pulled a still-spaced-out Jack up off the floor and pulled off his hoodie, which was only still clinging onto his body by dried blood and prayers.  
I had to tear his t-shirt off him, and he gave out a small yelp as it took some of his skin with it. The sheer amount of bruises he had was incredible. Not to mention the nasty, slowly-healing slashes across his chest from where old Aggie had tried to rearrange his organs.  
I shook my head sadly.  
“Oh Jack, who threw you down a mountain?”  
I grabbed a handful of paper towels and soaked them in the hot water.  
The only acknowledgment Jack gave was a short yelp when I began to slide the wet paper towels across his chest. They were quickly saturated in the foul mixture Jack was covered in. I was extra careful when cleaning the chest wounds. I worked my way around the spots that made him whimper when I touched them.  
By the time his arms and torso were clean enough, the trash can was nearly full. I made sure the water was still hot before moving onto his legs… er…. leg. I cleaned off the prosthetic too, but whatever sewage tank Jack had taken a bath in must’ve been some potent shit. It wasn’t coming off the hard, plasticky material very easily.  
The bruising he had around his stump of a right knee looked nothing short of excruciating. I emptied the styrofoam cup I’d been drinking from and filled it to rinse out his matted curls as best I could.  
As I watched the dark water swirl down the drain in the floor, I wondered if and when he’d come out of this trance. I went back out into the front and found a discarded, half-empty bottle of Tylenol.  
I crammed the paper towels I’d used to clean his lower half down into the trash can and gave him the pain medicine. I then went to work on his face. Soot, blood, tar pit juice, and black goo came off his face in equal measure.  
I finished by gently wiping the crust and dried tears from his red and sore eyes, and recognition sparkled in them.  
He stared at me for a moment before screaming and pushing me away, falling right on his ass. God, was I really that ugly?  
“WHO ARE YOU?!”  
I pondered his question for a moment. It was definitely not one I’d been expecting.  
“That’s an excellent question. Boy, you really put me on the spot here. man.”  
I scratched my head.  
“I don’t know, I’ve never really thought about it.”  
He scooted back into the corner of the bathroom as if he’d seen a big ass rat. I walked over and offered him my hand.  
He stared at it like it was a big ass rat.  
“Look, if you’re mad at me, I get it. I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. Anyway, did y’all miss me?”  
Jack struggled to his feet on his own. His voice cracked as he spoke. He sounded the way someone sounds when their dog and their mom die on the same day.  
“Jerry?”  
Something was wrong. Something terrible had happened to him, and I could tell. Sure, I knew the state I’d found him in couldn’t mean anything good, but his voice said it all. My face fell.  
“Dude… are you okay? This place looks like raccoons did a weather spell and summoned a supertornado. And you looked like really bad. Like just so so bad man. I thought you were a pile of garbage on the floor. No offense.”  
I watched as tears rolled down his cheeks.  
“I didn’t know where you’d gone and I thought you were dead. I’ve been so alone Jerry everyone’s left me and I’ve been here by myself this whole time and I’ve killed people Jerry _oh god_ I’ve killed _so many people_. It’s crazy how many people I’ve killed!”  
I chuckled a bit despite how generally unfunny the situation was.  
“Okay, look who’s bragging.”  
“I have nowhere to bury the bodies anymore! I’ve run out of room! Rita’s probably dead and Brother Riley is a fucking fugitive god and either the cookie twins are secretly fae or I murdered and ate an entire chipmunk! There’s no logical reason for me not to have been caught yet! I have a box of wallets and guns in the cooler! I eat coffee beans by the handful and they won’t even deliver goddamn pizza here anymore and the others all think I’m fucking crazy!”  
He went to say more, but it turned into hyperventilating. To be fair, he was acting a bit crazy, but I was seriously worried about him now. I walked over and— on a whim —hugged him.  
“Dude. Calm your tits. Just take some deep breaths. It’s gonna be okay, I promise.”  
His breathing slowed a bit, and he looked up at me.  
“We’ll figure it out together.”  
His face went red, and he pushed me away.  
“HOW, JERRY?! How is it going to be okay?! How in the hell are we gonna figure this out? You haven’t been here! You don’t know just how fucking bad it’s gotten. And where the hell were you anyways?!”  
“Dude, we went over this. I had to go and fake my own death.”  
“What?! When?!”  
“You don’t remember? The bounty hunters showed up on my birthday, and I got tired of paying my parents’ lackeys off. This was your idea. You said I should go and pretend to off myself so that they’d finally get off my ass. You said no communications until I came back, not even WhatsApp.”  
“When? When did we talk about this?”  
“On the phone. You were super detailed too. Kinda felt like you’d been planning this out on your own honestly. You sounded a bit off, but I just figured you had a cold or something. Told me I should go ahead and leave before the party too. I didn’t want to, but you insisted.”  
Jack looked down at the floor, and I could see the wheels in his head turning. Did he really not remember the phone call?  
He looked back up at me  
“That wasn’t me. I think they figured out how to copy voices. We can’t trust the phones anymore.”  
“Aww shit dude! Can they sound like Robin Williams?”  
He sighed.  
“I don’t know. Maybe? Why would they wanna do that though? But look…. a lot has happened since you’ve been gone, and god I’ve just…”  
He trailed off. I opened the bathroom door and examined the destruction again.  
“Yeah, I can tell. Gotta say Blackjack, I think you’ve found a new talent. Pretty astonishing how much you’ve managed to destroy in so little time.”  
“Jerry, it’s been months since you left. I’ve been fighting monsters ever since. They don’t stop coming. They never stop coming.”  
I knew Jack’s sense of time was a bit wackadoodle, but this was new. I gave him a funny look.  
“Uh…. dude?”  
“Yeah?”  
“I left last week.”  
He laughed a bit, more of a surprised laugh than an amused one.  
“What are you talking about?”  
“My birthday was six days ago. How much time did you think had passed?”  
He looked like I had just bitchslapped him in the face and told him his dad was gay. He stood there for several minutes, silent. For a second, I thought he’d gone back to whatever place he’d been when I found him.  
“You mean to tell me….. that I’ve done _ALL THIS_ …. in less than **ONE WEEK**?!”  
I nodded.  
“Seems like it.”  
He buried his face in his hands and let out a whimper.  
“Alright listen. I’m gonna go get you some clean clothes. And then here’s the plan. Are you familiar with the Japanese organization method of Konmari? Where you take everything in the building, look at it, and ask yourself, ‘Does this bring me joy?’ That’s what we're going to do. And whatever doesn’t bring you joy is going right into a giant ass bonfire, because bonfires bring me joy. We’ll start with the bills and go from there. I’ll get the kindling.”  
I walked out to the car and found a blue t-shirt with Fluttershy on it and some cargo shorts. Both looked a bit big, but not enough to slide right off of him.  
When I came back, Jack was standing behind the counter, holding a styrofoam ice chest with a mummified human head in it. He was talking to it, and I’m pretty sure he was referring to it as “Jerry”. Weird, but I would be lying if I said I hadn’t expected something like this the moment I rolled up to this shithole.  
“Sorry… I came in to give you these and…. uh…. what’s that you got there?”  
“Uh… nothing?”  
“Looks like you’re talking to a jerkified skull like a crazy person. Sounds like you named it after me too. Pretty freaky.”  
“Yeah.”  
I shrugged and grabbed a couple of lighters. If he wanted to have a Head Friend, it was none of my business.  
“Well dude, I’m not gonna tell you how to live your life. You do you.”  
I turned to leave, but he sat the ice chest down and came around the counter and grabbed my shoulder.  
“Wait. Jerry. I…. think it’s time to let this go. It’s served its purpose.”  
“Alright, cool. Do you want another Viking funeral, or—“  
“No Jerry. No more funerals god just— just get rid of it. Please.”  
I took the head out of the ice chest, evidently surprising Jack. I went outside with it and gave it my best dropkick into the forest. The raccoons dashed off into the woods after it, Rocco leading the charge.  
I wiped my hands off in the dirt.  
“Now that the unwanted guest is gone, we can talk about the others.”  
He gave me a confused look.  
“Who?”  
“Rosa and O’Brien! Where the hell are they? Something tells me they need rescuing more than this stuff needs burning. I’ll go grab some weapons and some snacks. Go grab anything you need, and then we’re going to the nearest KenTacoHut because I am _starving_. Then we go save Rosa first. Sound good, Jack O'Lantern?”  
His face looked conflicted. I watched his upper lip twitch for a moment, and then he took a deep breath. His voice was soft.  
“Hey, Jerry?”  
I turned and looked at him.  
“Yeah man?”  
Out of all the crazy shit that happened to me in the past six days— no, out of all the crazy shit that had happened to me in my _life_ , this was among the top three things that caught me most off guard.  
He walked closer, pulled me in, and kissed me in front of God and everybody. Of course, that's if you count the raccoons feasting on the jerky head as everybody.  
I know that I’m supposed to say, “oh it was the best kiss of my life,” but it wasn’t. He was all shaky, and his breath was horrible. He tasted bitter, like raw coffee beans.  
But it was the realest kiss of my life. I could feel the emotion behind it. It wasn’t just meaningless lip-locking.  
It wasn't the worst kiss of my life either, for sure. His lips were soft despite everything he’d apparently just been through. And there’s just always something magical about kissing someone shorter than you.  
He had his arms wrapped around me and was clinging on for dear life. I wrapped an arm around him and held him. I rubbed his back, trying to get him to stop shaking.  
I just wanted to make him feel better.  
I slid my hand up and gently caressed his cheek. It was rough from the stubble that had grown there. He did the same.  
After a minute or two, he pulled away. I stared into his eyes as he gently rubbed his thumb over my lip.  
“It’s good to have you back, Jerry.”  
I smiled.  
“It’s good to be back.”  
“I…. Can we talk about this later? What just happened? Just now?”  
I looked him up and down for a minute.  
“How about when this whole hot mess is over and done with, we can talk about it over coffee or whiskey or vinegar or whatever it is you wanna go out and drink together. How’s that sound?”  
He smiled. It was a pretty smile. I wanted to see it more.  
“That sounds nice.”  
I kissed his cheek.  
“Good. Now you get dressed. I’ll be back. Then we’ll go kick ass.”  
“What? Why?”  
“Cause I gotta piss like a frat house moose.”  
He grinned.  
“Shut up Jerry.”


End file.
